


it had been 4 am

by Lonewritersclub



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Batman has a handful of naked clown once again, Batman's confused, Depression, Depressive Episode, Fluff, Girl buddy Harley, Joker is sad, Medication, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Sad Clown, and afraid, and worried
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 14:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19770217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lonewritersclub/pseuds/Lonewritersclub
Summary: “What did ya think?” she asked. Challenged him.They weren’t talking about the bomb threat anymore. And Bruce didn’t know what to say.“I didn’t know he was sick like that.”





	it had been 4 am

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Depictions of a depressive episode and meds down below!

It had been 4 am. Joker had made a threat.

A bomb was going to blow up at the priced Gotham Church at midnight unless the mayor didn’t drown himself in the Gotham River by using his smiling children, with their stomachs filled with rocks, to weigh him down from his feet all the way to rockbottom. 

Obviously the mayor wasn’t going to go take a Salem baptism so the church was immediately evacuated. People still weren’t happy about having their valued, old church go down in flames, however, as the bomb squat was helpless at finding the expertly hidden explosives. This meant one thing and one thing only for the Batman.

Joker needed to be found and the detonation stopped.

Besides, if no bombs could be found inside the church, it could also mean that Joker had misled them and he was going to demolish some other property. This meant that possibly the lives of hundreds of people were at risk.

So Bruce set out on a mission to find the clown price of crime and bring an end to his evil plans. Bruce knew it was really just him being a bored old clown but it was sometimes hard to tell with him when he really meant it and when he didn’t. When he wanted to destroy and maim, and when he just wanted to see the Bat.

After a throughout search of the town, it was two hours before midnight when Bruce finally found Joker in his new hideout. It was creaky old one bedroom apartment on the Amusement Mile side of the Newtown but it looked like it was a good enough place with curtains and all. Had a proper light of bedside lamp and everything. A humming fridge in the dark corner by a croaky, rusty sink. 

It was odd, though.

Joker was just lying in the shabby double-bed in the middle of the room. Curled up in blankets looking like he was just about done coming out of anaesthesia. That wasn't right.

He was supposed to be out there in the city welcoming the Bat into his razor laced arms on the roof of a tall building in Old Gotham with his rouge wide smile dripping his venomous jokes. Why was Bruce finding him still here instead? It didn’t look like he had even dressed yet or put on his makeup.

Well. That wasn’t so important to Bruce right now. The bomb was.

Bruce crashed in through one of the two windows in the apartment and easily rolled onto his feet bringing the cool night air inside with him. Glass shards crunched under his boots as he stood up tall and quickly turned on his heels to face Joker in a ready-to-attack mode.

The clown remained motionless however. Didn’t even twitch an eyelid.

Bruce froze for a second in pure bafflement. What was going on? Was this a game of some sorts? A trick? Bruce glanced over his shoulder to see if someone was going come out of the closed and jump him from the back. But the room was empty for all he could tell, save for himself and Joker of course.

Bruce’s attention was suddenly stolen by the clown when Joker tugged on the blue blanket covering him and brought up it closer to his chin, burrowing his pale face into it without even bothering to take a glimpse at Batman.

Clearly he wasn’t dead then but something was definitely wrong here. Had he become ill perhaps?

Well. That wasn’t so important to Bruce right now either. Finding whether there really was a bomb was his first priority. If this was a joke lying in front of him, or completely something else, Bruce didn’t care. There were lives at jeopardy.

With a stern scowl Bruce took the three large, determined steps to get to the bed and in fast succession wrenched the blanket off from the clown’s face and proceeded to grab him by the shoulders to haul him to a seated position and look at him.

“Where is the bomb, Joker.”

In his rough voice Bruce rather demanded than asked.

The clown finally slid his eyes open at that yet his expression remained the strange lax one it had been since Bruce saw him tonight. On the tape they had showed on the morning news that same day, he still had been his usual erratic self, full of untameable destructive energy and theatrics.

This, on the other hand, was utterly out of character for him. Something Bruce had never witnessed before. It was disconcerting.

Joker stared at Batman blankly, weak breath moving past his slightly parted lips, dry and pale. The black rings surrounding his eyes were not of makeup but of sleep deprivation, and even his cheeks seemed more hollowed out than usual when paired with his bare skin looking so flat and nearly bluish.

Bruce froze at the sight in front of him, now that he was up and personal with the man.

“Joker?” his voice was quieter now. Just above whisper.

Joker steered his gaze away from him, terribly slow as if it took great effort from him, and started to turn his back to him the best he could in Bruce’s hold. He was trying to delve back into the comfort of his blankets and pillows, not shedding even a nasty remark at Batman.

Bruce was forced to let the clown fall back into the bed because he simply didn’t know what else he could do. He was left at a standstill.

The sudden slam of the front door stole Bruce’s attention then. He whipped his head around, nearly causing himself a whiplash, to spot a deeply enraged Harley Quinn at the entrance of the apartment, her huge red and black mallet in one hand, shoulders squared and a viciously dirty look plastered on her painted face.

“I’mma count ta three and if ya still there, ya gonna have a dent in ya skull to keep ya company too.”

Harley’s voice was low and steady as she threatened Batman. In fact, this it was so adamant and violent this time that Bruce figured it best to leave some space between himself and the clown. She was clearly worried about him and was even ready to truly tackle down the Batman in order to protect him.

Bruce wasn’t looking for any unnecessary trouble and it didn’t look like Joker was about to flee any time soon, so he gracefully took a few steps back from the bed over to stand near the open window with the raggedy curtains through which he had made his way in.

Harley cautiously threaded her way further inside the apartment, keeping her gaze firmly on Batman to make sure he wasn’t up to anything, until she was on the other side of the bed Joker was lying on. Only now, in the better lighting of the bedside lamp, did Bruce notice the brown paperbag she was carrying in her other hand.

“Why don’t ya take a hike, B-man. We don’t need ya lurking around here right now”, she said in an unyielding, solid way, still very careful not to lose her fighting stance. Her grip on the mallet was visibly tight and secure. Her glare was strong.

Batman wasn’t going to go anywhere.

“Joker made a bomb threat this morning. I’m not leaving until I know where it is, or if there even is one in the first place”, Bruce told her with the composure of determination.

Harley went quiet and looked down to the clown, face buried in the pillows again, unmoving.

She bit her lower lip.

She frowned.

It seemed like she was trying to weigh out something in her head. It took a minute.

Then the creases between her brows eased and she set the paperbag down. With a sigh.

She let down the mallet by the bedside table, too.

“There is an explosive – that much is true”, Harley relented in a tired voice, “But it’s just a firecracker. Some kid in a clown mask is gonna plant it inside the church just before midnight. It’s gonna do its thing, light up the room, make a swish-swoosh-pap-pap-pap and all that jazz, but nothing’s gonna get blown up or burned down.”

Harley sighed again and started opening up the paperbag with a rustle.

“It’s just a joke.”

And from the paperbag Harley threw out small orange bottles of antidepressants onto the bed.

“It’s fine.”

Bruce stared at the pill bottles in stunned silence. Harley looked at him. Strongly.

“What did ya think?” she asked. Challenged him.

They weren’t talking about the bomb threat anymore. And Bruce didn’t know what to say.

“I didn’t know he was sick like that.”

Harley didn’t look impressed. She slumped down to sit on the edge of the bed before opening up one of the little medicine bottles.

“Get me a glass o’ water”, she said and shook out two white pills into her hand.

Bruce did as asked and filled the glass next to the dingy sink with some cold water and gave it to her yet still keeping his distance. He didn’t want to tower over her right now.

Harley put down the glass of water and the pills onto the nightstand so that she could maneuver the clown to a better swallowing position first. She grabbed onto Joker’s shoulders like Bruce had done before, and tried to get him to sit up some. Joker, however, didn’t seem to possess any energy at all or simply didn’t want to cooperate, so it was impossible for Harley to keep him sat up against the headboard without taking off her hold on him for when she had to administer him the drugs too.

It was a pitiful sight, one that made Bruce’s chest clench worse than when he had heard about the threat that morning at 4 am.

Harley didn’t protest when Bruce got onto the bed on his knees on Joker’s other side and helped get him into position. He wound his right arm around Joker’s slim chest, under his armpits, and held him up so Joker’s back leaned against Bruce’s Kevlar clad chest.

Once again, Bruce was so shocked by the situation at hand that he felt confused to his very core. It was so strange to be holding the man so carefully, as if he was the most fragile, priced thing in the world when normally, out on the streets, Bruce had to beat him up nearly to a pulp just to get him to stop whirling around with his knives leaving awful purple bruises on his snow white skin. But here he was, so vulnerable and weak, lying in Bruce’s arms like this like a sad little ragdoll and Bruce was trying so hard to cope with it while staying Batman.

Even Joker's head had lolled down, chin to chest from not being able to keep it upright, so Bruce had to cradle his jaw with his left hand to elevate it in order for him drink down his medicine.

But that’s when things took a turn. Joker started struggling. He turned his head around, pulling himself off from Bruce’s chest. He was trying to get away from him.

“No, Mista J, no no no, let us help you. Let Batman help you, Puddin’. Stop that”, Harley softly tried to reason with him and hold his head still for Bruce.

It didn’t seem to work, though.

The fight was weak, of course, but it did put a serious damper on the already dire situation. Joker didn’t want Bruce’s help and it felt worse than it should have.

“No, no…”, Joker moaned out in a exhausted breathy way as he tried to twist himself out of Bruce’s grip. Bruce held him as gently as he could without letting him go. Joker’s shifting on the bed then caused for the blanket to move from his lap and to reveal that he was completely naked underneath it. Bruce didn't inhale for a second. 

The clown stopped moving.

His thin chest was heaving. Head slouched down to hide his face from them. His dishevelled long hair hid the quivering of his lips.

Bruce felt so bad for him.

Harley gently lifted the blue blanket back up and this time Joker let himself be taken care of. Bruce resumed his hold of him, his hand softly supporting his jaw so that the green head laid across his Bruce’s caped shoulder.

From behind the messy emerald locks, Joker watched helplessly at Harley, through half-lidded eyes, as she came closer to him with the two pills in her one hand and the glass of water in the other.

Bruce lowered his head a bit so that his mouth was level with Joker’s ear. He quietly spoke to him and no one else. 

“It’s okay, Jay. I’ll still go watch the fireworks after this.”

Joker’s gaze wandered to Bruce’s side, and it was hard to tell with the muddy sadness and tiredness overpowering his usually magnetic eyes, but it seemed that Bruce’s words had had an effect on him. Maybe his pupils dilated just a bit. Maybe some life was brought back to the acidic irises. Bruce couldn’t say for sure.

All he knew was that the clown then opened his lips obediently when Harley came to pop the pills inside and swallowed them down with the cool water afterwards. Harley exhaled quietly. 

Joker's eyes shut then, closing out the warm light coming from the bedside lamp that was the sole lightsource in the room.

This offered Bruce with the say-so to let his gauntlet covered fingers brush over Joker’s messy hair, for no real explainable reason, before laying him back down on the bed after Harley had also fluffed up his pillow. Bruce stood up from the bed quietly.

Harley tucked the clown with the blankets better this time and finally gave him a small chaste kiss to his forehead before standing back up too.

She looked at Batman. Bruce looked back at her.

“Will you be alright?” he asked.

She smiled a little.

“I’ll manage.”

Bruce nodded.

He left the same way he had come in and headed straight for the Gotham church. It was too late to stop the kid from lighting up the firecrackers at that point but Bruce was going to keep his promise to Joker. He was going to watch the fireworks the clown had set up for him.

Even if he couldn’t be there himself that night.

Maybe another time, then.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! Long time no see! You have no idea what a craze it has been up here as of late, but there's a lot more to it than that, too. I'll let you know in the last chapter of "Another Chance" when I get to it. I promise I'll be publishing it soon. I'm so sorry for the terrible wait. 
> 
> By the way, I fortunately don't have much experience with depression myself or at least with medicating it so I'm sorry if this feels off to some of you. But this is fiction, what we're talking about here anyway, so I guess it's not that big of a deal either way. I'm just letting you know in case you feel like I'm exaggerating the symptoms or something. Do let me know though if you would like to clarify something up for me, I'd appreciate it - although don't push it!
> 
> Please do leave some feedback in the comments on how you liked this and if you have any headcanons concerning these themes in the fic. At first, I thought I'd make a comedic version of this idea in my head where Batman is completely perplexed by the situation and is just trying to drag his lethargic clown out to play with him in the yard. But you know me, I don't know much else other than drama and drabble. Dramadrabble. Dramble. 
> 
> Anyway, see you soon, hopefully, on the other fic too :) Thanks for reading and hope you have a great day!


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